You may have been wondering what’s been happening with the trail cam I got for Christmas. Well, firstly the batteries gave out after only 3 days. This may have been partly due to the sub-zero temperatures, partly the quality of the batteries and partly due to the camera taking numerous (apparently blank) videos. My conclusion is that the field of ‘vision’ of the movement sensor is much wider than that of the camera, so it is continuing to record things which are off camera. (I have plenty of clips with bums just about visible in the corners).
Next, you may recall I went for a walk without a memory card in my camera – because I’d put the SD card in the trail cam. Well, I bought a new SD card and formatted it using the trail cam, but it didn’t seem to work. The next 2 days drew blanks – even though there were clear signs of activity in the snow. It didn’t actually recognise the SD card, so I swapped it with another from my camera and now everything seems to be working OK. (You’ll be glad to know that after re-formatting the new SD card, it is also working fine in my camera).
In between times I had been tinkering with some settings, which also seemed to mess things up, so now I’m down to a simple, 15 second video with 20 second pause in between, though the camera is meant to carry on recording for a short while if there is activity in the last 4 seconds. (The manual talks about a Dynamic setting, which my device doesn’t seem to have!)
Anyhow, below are 3 of the best videos, with the last two having 3 clips stitched together.
First up is a roe deer, which came around 6:30pm a few days ago now and you can see the tree to which the Trail cam is attached for the second two videos.
Second, here’s a huge stag, again from 2 or 3 days ago, which was timed at 10:15pm, tucking into some vegetable scraps we left outside.
Last, but not least, is another roe deer, (could even be the same one as above), again timed at 6:30pm yesterday evening. You can see how alert it is to any surrounding noises, with the ears acting like radar scanners.
It may also be worth saying that we live only about 100 metres above the road which goes around the village, though the woods are not far behind our group of 6 or 7 chalets. So these creatures are coming down quite low to find food. Indeed, 2 of our neighbour’s young trees have had their lower branches nipped off completely.
And, just in case you wonder what the light is, which appears towards the end of this video (top left), it’s not a plane or UFO, but the piste machine preparing the ski slopes above Lannaz. 🏂